


tend to the flame (worship the ashes)

by DrowningInStarlight



Category: Campaign (Podcast)
Genre: Hurt No Comfort, Other, Pre-Canon, Sharing a Bed, me seeing a forest themed god-type creature with implied dubious morality: it's free real estate!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25830097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInStarlight/pseuds/DrowningInStarlight
Summary: He can't help dreaming of the forest.
Relationships: Gable/Travis Matagot, Travis Matagot & The Forest Queen
Comments: 15
Kudos: 34





	tend to the flame (worship the ashes)

**Author's Note:**

> i... don't know what happened. enjoy. 
> 
> title adapted from ashes by the longest johns.

After leaving the forest, Travis goes to find Gable. 

He always leaves, eventually. Sometimes he wakes up on the outskirts, and he barely even has to walk before the ground feels steady under his feet again. Sometimes, he’s caught between the trees and the river, swollen with the ice melt off the hills. He sits on the shore for hours, waiting for the pace to calm again. This time, though, the forest had been slow to release him. He’d wandered until his paws bled, and then walked some more, and only when he was leaving bloody paw prints on the summer soil did her gracious majesty see fit to let him go once more. 

He always drifts back to Gable, eventually. Sometimes, it’s by accident, glaring at each other across crowded bars or side by side in prison cells. Sometimes, it’s deliberate— he follows the stories of a white-haired spectre, playing villain and hero alike depending on the tale. They never could stick to a brand. 

This time, he finds them in an ancient oakwood inn, in the kind of town that’s a little too close to the sea for anyone’s comfort nowadays. It’s a warm, summery night, as he pads across the market square. It had been winter when he’d fallen back into the trees. For a moment, he feels a pang of longing for the world he’d grown up in, so long ago, where the changing of the seasons would have been an anchorpoint against the passing of time. He quickly pushes the feeling away. 

No one in the inn seems to notice a coyote slipping through the kitchen door and up the backstairs. But then, he isn’t as snowy-white as he used to be. Not after so long with her. 

It’s not hard to find Gable’s room. It’s small, off the corner of the landing, with a strategic view of the stairs. He can hear them humming tunelessly to themselves even before he paws the door open. 

“Whaddup,” he says. “What day is it?” 

They jump, swinging round with a curse on their lips. They smell of blood, but their clothes are clean, which means they’re probably bounty hunting again. They’d been a farmhand last time he’d seen them, but then, that _had_ been… he doesn’t know how long it’s been anymore. 

He watches the way they instinctively reach for a sword that, the last time he’d seen them, had been unreal enough to come when it was called. It doesn’t, this time. Maybe the universe is finally starting to work out where to fit Gable in. “Ah!” they say, followed immediately by “Travis?” 

“The one and _only,”_ he says, taking another painful step into the room. He knows he sounds a little drunk, and he kind of feels it, too. Drunk on the colours and the noise of the real world, after so long in the haze of the wood. He doesn’t even notice his legs giving out on him until it’s too late. The unconsciousness he slips into is heavy with dark green light, filled with the distant whispering of trees— 

People always think that he _escapes_ from the forest. That isn’t true, not really. He never _escapes._ He just comes, and goes. Following a cycle that even the seasons have abandoned. It’s not dramatic, or harrowing, not in the way people think. It’s just… like breathing. An inhale, and exhale. William goes to the wood. Travis stumbles out of it. 

When he drifts back to consciousness, there are roots curling into his flesh, thorns hooking and binding— no. It’s fingers, softly tugging through his fur. He blinks, trying to rid himself of the sensation of creeping vines, the way that part of him wants nothing more than to close his eyes again and try to drift back into the slow, green space underneath the pines. 

“You’re a mess,” Gable murmurs. There’s a single candle on the windowsil, casting a flickering golden light across the room. The door to the little room is shut, and they’re sitting on their bed. He’s been dumped unceremoniously on their lap. He is a mess, he knows it. All dirt and blood and dying magic. 

“And you’re still rude,” he says. “What time is it?” 

Gable’s fingers carry on pulling the fragments of leaves and twigs from his fur, seemingly oblivious of the mess it’s making of the bed. “Couple of hours from sunrise,” they say. “What happened?”

He gives them a look, which is far less effective as a coyote. They stare back, unwavering. 

“The same thing that _always_ happens, idiot,” he says. He feels a little better now. Less distant. Leaving the forest behind, for now. An exhale. 

They shake their head, and he can’t identify the emotion on their face. “Why do you go back?” they ask, quietly, without the judgement that would normally come with such a question. Just a calm, detached curiosity. He resents them for it. 

No. That isn’t quite true. He doesn’t care about their detachment. He resents them for not being like _him._ There’s no one else like either of them, but they still aren’t the same. He pretends they understand, and then resents them when they don’t. It isn’t only the part of his life that belongs to the forest that is twisted and knotted with old wounds. 

“You wouldn’t get it,” he says, and he knows a little of his bitterness makes it into his tone. 

“I _was_ there, remember?” 

They’re right. There isn’t a soul who remembers that night anymore, except for him, them, and… Her. 

Their hands haven’t stilled on his fur. “Do you love her?” they ask next, still with that curious little note in their voice. 

He laughs, unwillingly. “I would have thought you of all people would understand that nothing’s that simple.” 

“I don’t think it’s that complicated.” 

“What use would a forest have for love?” he says, and now he really does sound bitter. “What use would _she_ have for love?” 

“I think most people can find a use for love,” Gable says mildly. “If it’s being offered.”

The candlelit shadows dance across their face, lighting their hair up starkly against the timber of the inn wall. For a moment, they look totally alien— something approaching ethereal. He should probably find that more off putting than he does, but it’s amazing what attending the Court can do for numbing your self preservation instinct. 

They put their hand back down on his back, then pull their fingertips away, and shows them to him. They’re stained red in the candlelight. “You’re injured,” they say.

“I don’t think it’s mine,” Travis says vaguely. “It might not even be blood.” 

They shake their head at him, and wipe their hand on the bedsheet. “I’m gonna go find a rag or something,” they say. “Get the rest of the blood, or, or whatever.” 

“Be my guest,” he says, rolling off to the side to let Gable get off. “Anything that saves me walking. My paws hurt. It is _such_ a long way out of the forest this time of year. That’s midsummer for you, I suppose.” 

“That’s tonight?” Gable says from the floor, knelt to rifle through their pack. 

“I— I didn’t think I knew that, but... it is.” 

Gable looks up to give him another unreadable look. He watches them find a rag and wet it with water from their waterskin in silence. 

“Why are you doing this?” he asks eventually, as they dab the blood-sap-something off his fur. 

They don’t speak for a long moment, and when they do, it’s so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it. “I wish _she_ was kinder.” 

Travis laughs again. “That implies that she knows the difference between kindness and cruelty, which I can assure you, she considers quite mortal distinctions and entirely beneath her.” 

“I’m not mortal,” Gable points out. “Never was. And I know the difference.” They’re completely implacable, as if made of marble. 

“Do you?” Travis asks, just for the sake of being nasty. He wants them to get angry, or, or something. He doesn’t know what to do with this _distance._ Not after so long in the trees. But then, maybe Gable is just as much a bad habit he doesn't care to break as _she_ is. “Or do you know mercies and retributions?” 

“Is there a difference?” they say, and he can see in their eyes that they're completely, innocently genuine. 

“I hate you,” he says, and for a moment, he means it with every part of his soul. “I hate you.” 

They dump the rag on his muzzle. “Well, you can do this yourself then,” they say haughtily. 

Travis shrugs it off and stalks down to the end of the bed. They don’t talk again, even as the sun rises and fills the little room with daylight. Gable doesn't kick him out, or leave themselves. They don't sleep, either. 

This could be something good, if they both tried. He knows it. But why try? This is so much easier. This feels right. Gable isn't like the Forest Queen, not really. But it is possible that Travis does have a type. 

He's still angry with them, and their glare isn't softened by the coming of morning. But, when he’s a human once again, he leans up to kiss them, and they don’t hesitate to kiss him back. Travis doesn’t stop to breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me about complicated relationships with angels & forests at my tumblr [drowninginstarlights!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/drowninginstarlights)


End file.
